Sidelining the WikiLeaks founder at its center, Australian director Ben Lawrence's nonfiction film instead focuses on the efforts of the activist's family to rally political support for him
Needless to say, the unsympathetic make for the powerful’s best-paraded examples in maintaining a climate of control, and when the power is a government, curtailing press freedom is always in its sights.
“Ithaka” focuses on the fight to unshackle Assange from his legal peril through the rallying efforts of his septuagenarian father, John Shipton, and then-fiancée Stella Moris, with whom Assange has two children. As they bide their time in the U.K.
Shipton and Moris are indeed figures to care about, their lives on an unimaginable edge between worry for a loved one whose health and mental state are frequently reported as precarious and needed strength for their own campaign to find supporters.
Moris, meanwhile, we see taking care of her and Assange’s boys, talking with Assange on the phone and giving interviews that speak to her deep support for Assange’s work and belief that he is a political prisoner whose life is in danger. The subject of psychological torture is addressed in the film by interviewee Nils Melzer, a Swiss lawyer and U.N.
Still, “Ithaka” isn’t as effective an advocacy doc as it could be, sometimes feeling trapped between wanting to intellectualize with onscreen text and contextualized history and looking for observational moments that crystallize the pain and concern for the Assange family.
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